‘Grumpy the Clown’ elected to Brazil’s Congress, but can he read?

Earlier this year we ran a piece by Julia Ioffe on some of the eccentrics and entertainers elected to Russia’s Duma under the front-page headline "Send in the Clowns." Now I feel like we may have used that one too early: Grumpy the clown won election in a laugher, getting more votes than any other ...

Earlier this year we ran a piece by Julia Ioffe on some of the eccentrics and entertainers elected to Russia’s Duma under the front-page headline "Send in the Clowns." Now I feel like we may have used that one too early:

Grumpy the clown won election in a laugher, getting more votes than any other candidate for Brazil’s Congress. Now he has to prove that he can read and write.

The Sao Paulo Electoral Court held a closed-door exam for the clown turned congressman-elect on Thursday to determine if he meets a constitutional mandate that federal lawmakers be literate.

Francisco Silva became famous as Tiririca — "Grumpy" in Portuguese — and received about 1.3 million votes, nearly twice as many as the next-highest vote-getter in last month’s congressional elections. His campaign videos drew millions of viewers on the Internet, with slogans such as "It can’t get any worse" and "What does a federal deputy do? Truly, I don’t know. But vote for me and you’ll find out."

But a less humorous element emerged during the campaign: Allegations that Silva, like 10 percent of Brazilians, is illiterate. Judge Aloisio Silveira ruled that there were discrepancies between the handwriting on Silva’s application to run for Congress and that on the document in which he swears he can read and write and in autographs he gave to fans.

The exam was held on Thursday and apparently Tiririca both "read and wrote" during it, though it’s not yet clear if he was proficient enough to hold office.